On the timing of pregnancy

This is an interesting observation about teenage pregnancy, particularly because I was thinking about the timing of pregnancy within the Noble Ape simulation which I've been tinkering with.



In the simulation, and presumably to some extent in real life also, there are two polar opposite strategies which females could follow. One strategy is to mate as early and as often as possible, maximising your genetic velocity. This strategy may be successful in situations where there are no strong selection pressures and pretty much any actions will lead to survival success.

However, in an environment where survival relies critically upon the collective cooperation between group members it may make more sense to follow a second strategy, which is to delay early mating and try to select the best quality male you can find. Associating with high status group members increases your survival chances, and those of your offspring, because the leaders of the pack get the first choice of food and the best standard of living (groomed by lower status individuals, etc). If ascribed status effects apply, and if high status individuals have a significantly higher survival chance, then the benefit accrued over time may outweigh a strategy of going for maximum genetic velocity.

In the latter context I'm not sure that culture is actually acting counter to evolution, as is being claimed in the video, but instead there is a necessity due to environmental pressures for the selfish genes to follow a different strategy in order to successfully propagate across time - simply sprinting as fast as you can doesn't cut it any more.

It could be that the reason for the stigma attached to teenage pregnancy is because it diverts resources away from the normally stable group survival dynamic, where the dynamic has evolved over time to be in some sense close to optimal within the prevailing environmental conditions. The teenage mother may in some sense be sacrificing her ability to contribute to the survivability of the group overall in order to gain an individual genetic advantage.